Friday, July 23, 2010

I'm was feeling a bit nostalgic for the early days of MLS this morning so I thought I'd find some clips from the Inaugural Season in 1996. It turns out that most of the clips on youtube from that season involve the NY/NJ Metrostars so many of the clips involve NY/NJ.

For those that haven't followed MLS since the start, here are a few of the quirky rules that were in place for that season (from wikipedia)

...the use of a countdown clock, rather than a standard progressive clock, with time paused for dead ball situations at a referee's discretion. Halves ended when the clock reached 0:00, rather than at the whistle of the referee as was customary elsewhere.

Also implemented was the use of shootouts to resolve tie games. These best-of-five contests placed a player 35 yards from goal with five seconds to put the ball past the opposing goalkeeper; if needed the shootout progressed into extra frames. A winning team received one standings point (as opposed to three for the regulation win).

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Here are a few defensive stats from the 2010 World Cup by players who played a minimum of 270 minutes. Rather than listing the leaders for each stat (many of the players from teams who progressed further and played more games were the leaders), I broke them down per minutes played. (example: Minutes Played divided by Tackles). The top five, with ties counting as one place, were listed for each stat.

Monday, July 19, 2010

I'm on vacation with the family in Northern Michigan right now. I thought I might have time to make a post or two while up here but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. No internet tomorrow on Mackinac Island and I'll be driving all day the next day. I'll try to resume regular posting on Thursday or Friday. Time to relax....

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

I've tried going through customer support for months now and have not been able to fix the stuttering video on MLS Matchday Live. I can run Netflix, Hulu, ESPN3, revision3 HD, Vimeo HD, etc. perfectly clear with no stuttering, all on the highest quality. My computer has more than enough power to handle streaming video and I supposedly have 20Mbps broadband although it's usually closer to 6-10Mbps when I test it.

My question is this.

Has anybody else had this stuttering video problem with MLS Matchday Live and have you been able to find a fix for it?

The picture quality is good but the motion stutters on every setting, from 400 to 2200 to adaptive. It has become very frustrating trying to watch games for more than half a season now with very little response from customer support outside of the canned 'update your software' response I've received a half dozen times now.

I've reinstalled all the required software, everything is up to date, all other streaming sites are working perfectly, I've tried every major browser, so what's the deal? Is it my ISP ? Is it clashing with other software I have installed on my computer? A silverlight problem? Is there some kind of voodoo trick I can do to get MDL working?

If there are any computer experts or people who've solved a similar problem out there, I'd be more than grateful for a fix.

Please leave a comment or email me at thebesteleven [@] ymail [dot] com if you have any ideas

Thursday, July 8, 2010

This post is kind of random, but every once in a while I wonder what kind of National Teams could be put together if you combined nations with similar cultures and geographic locations. I've done a combined USSR and a combined Yugoslavia in the past.

This is my attempt at putting together an Arabian Peninsula National Team. I'm not an expert on the region, so feel free to help me out if I missed any deserving players. I think this team would be a strong contender for one of the Asian World Cup Finals spots along with Japan, Australia, and South Korea.